er less
than twenty feet of water in the well.

[Illustration: The Well at Gad's Hill Place]

It may be interesting to mention that Gad's Hill Place ("the title of my
estate, sir, my place down in Kent"), which is in the parish of Higham,
and about twenty-six miles from London, stands on an elevation two
hundred and fifty feet above mean sea-level. The house itself is built
on a bed of the Thanet sands. The well is bored right through these
sands, which Mr. W. H. Whitaker, F.R.S., of H. M. Geological Survey (who
has kindly given me some valuable information on the subject), states
"may be about forty feet thick, and the water is drawn up from the bed
of chalk beneath. This bed is of great thickness, probably six hundred
or seven hundred feet, and the well simply reaches the level at which
the chalk is charged with water, _i. e._ something a little higher than
the level of the neighbouring river." The chalk is exposed on the lower
bases of Gad's Hill, such as the Railway Station at Higham, the village
of Chalk, the town of Strood, etc.

There are humorous extracts from letters by Dickens in Forster's _Life_
respecting the well, which may appropriately be introduced. He says:--

"We are still (6th of July) boring for water here, at the rate of two
pounds per day for wages. The men seem to like it very much, and to be
perfectly comfortable." . . . And again, "Here are six men perpetually
going up and down the well (I know that somebody will be killed), in the
course of fitting a pump; which is quite a railway terminus--it is so
iron, and so big. The process is much more like putting Oxford Street
endwise, and laying gas along it, than anything else. By the time it is
finished, the cost of this water will be something absolutely frightful.
But of course it proportionately increases the value of the property,
and that's my only comfort. . . . Five men have been looking attentively
at the pump for a week, and (I should hope) may begin to fit it in the
course of October." The depression caused by the prospect of the
"absolutely frightful" cost of the water seems to have continued to the
end of the letter, for it thus concludes:--"The horse has gone lame from
a sprain, the big dog has run a tenpenny nail into one of his hind feet,
the bolts have all flown out of the basket carriage, and the gardener
says all the fruit trees want replacing with new ones."

[Illustration: The Porch, Gad's Hill Place.]

Two of the Major's do